What does it matter if he sneezes a few times beneath the sheets? ‘Now? With your mother and all your relatives in the house?’ ‘Why should they mind? I didn’t sleep at all last night and I’m unwell. They’ve all drunk so much I daresay they’ll scarcely notice my absence at dinner.’ ‘Your absence?’ ‘Yes. If you could let them know, Sophie, I’d much appreciate it. I’ll bid you goodnight, then.’ And he walks past me, pausing at the door of the kitchen to have a short conversation with the cook. I hear the words ‘pick it up from the floor and wash it’, and wonder which part of the dinner suffered a mishap. It seems dinner may prove as great a disappointment as Harry’s offer to make an honest woman of me. So I return to the parlour, where card games are underway. Mrs Bishop has offered the hotel as a stake, and I hope the ladies are too drunk to remember anything of it when the time comes to settle up. Amelia, who is looking rather wobbly and pink-cheeked from the claret, clutches my sleeve when I enter the room.
What do You think about Mr Bishop And The Actress?
